The Trump Administration’s Iran Policy Will Hasten Imperial Decline

There was a postwar order, but was it liberal?  Like most political orders, it looked much better on paper than it did in practice and to the core members of the order than those on the margins…

Liberal values were only remotely attached to the postwar institutions.  Sovereign equality did not translate into a liberal world order.  The postwar institutions were run by the most powerful countries, with middle and lesser powers either shunted to the back of the room or locked out altogether…Third World now comprised most of the world’s states, but it was on the outside looking in.  Western states enjoyed democracy and the rule of law, but the U.S. and the former colonial masters undermined rather than supported democracy and human rights elsewhere. Some Western states and analysts presumed that the global order must have some legitimacy because there were no great (or at least successful) revolts by the Third World, but they mistook coercion and the lack of alternative for consent…

The suggestion, then, is that if the international order is having greater difficulty creating rule-based governance, it might have less to do with the weakening of liberalism and more to do with the fact that the rules that have been in place for decades were overdue for an overhaul, and especially given a shift in power from the West to the East.  

– From Michael N. Barnett’s piece: The End of a Liberal International Order That Never Existed

A primary focus of my writing of late centers around the idea that the policies of the Trump administration, and the neocons in control of it, will hasten the decline of U.S. imperial power and more rapidly usher in a multi-polar (and possibly bifurcated) world. Today’s news regarding the elimination of waivers on Iranian oil imports provides another perfect example.

Specifically, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced earlier today that waivers which allowed eight countries to import Iranian crude oil without being subject to U.S. sanctions would expire on May 2 without extension. The eight countries included are China, India, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Greece, Italy and Taiwan.

This move is an extraordinarily foolish and reckless act which illustrates the extreme hubris and short-sightedness of those running American foreign policy under Trump. What the U.S. is decreeing to the entire world with this action is that the U.S., and the U.S. alone, decides who gets to trade with who. The U.S. is telling China, the second largest economy in the world and home to over one billion people, that it lacks the sovereign authority to buy oil from Iran if it so desires. If the U.S. can unilaterally play boss on the trade decisions of foreign countries, national sovereignty does not exist in practice anywhere on the planet. There is only empire.

As such, this goes beyond aggressive foreign policy. It’s more or less an assertion by the Trump administration that the world is in fact a global dictatorship run by a single nation (empire) that has granted itself the authority to arbitrarily decide which countries get to participate in global trade, and which ones do not. Now that the true nature of U.S. power is so completely out in the open, countries will have to decide to either bend the knee or resist, which seems to be the point. What do you think China’s going to do?

One thing people seem to miss when making geopolitical observations is an analysis of the role played by internal politics. It’s not all about military or economic might, popular opinion on the ground and the domestic internal mood also matter when it comes to foreign policy success or failure. It’s from this perspective that China appears to hold a better hand than the U.S.

Political power is largely about perception and narrative control, which is why the U.S. move here is so fundamentally irresponsible. Chinese leadership can play the victim game and sell their perspective easily to the public. Look at rising oil prices they’ll say, noting that this is the result of the Americans not allowing anyone to buy oil from Iran. Why shouldn’t the great nation of China be able to buy oil from whomever they want, they’ll say.

The U.S. will look like a global bully meddling in the affairs of a sovereign nation, and this narrative will resonate with the population there. China’s leadership can call this an unprovoked attack on the Chinese people and their national sovereignty. China will not bend the knee to the U.S. for many reasons, but an overlooked factor relates to the fact that the public would not find such subjugation acceptable. If public opinion didn’t matter, governments wouldn’t spend so much time propagandizing and actively keeping their citizens uninformed.

The U.S. finds itself in the exact opposite scenario. While compulsive liars like Pompeo can endlessly repeat nonsense such as “Iran is the number one state-sponsor of terrorism,” nobody but the most brainwashed Trump diehards actually believe this. As such, the masses of people here in the U.S. won’t get riled up and excited about another pointless Middle East conflict, particularly as oil prices continue to march higher. Unlike China, U.S. leadership can’t reasonably expect to convince the American public the Trump administration is simply playing defense with its aggressive action against Iran. It’s crystal clear the move is nothing more than a power-play designed to consolidate, and possibly even expand, American imperial dominance. Importantly, wars for empire are not particularly popular domestically, and getting less so with each passing day.

What I’m trying to say is Chinese leadership can expect to have the public on its side if it decides to resist U.S. diktats on who it can purchase oil from. China standing up for its right to buy oil from any country it desires is an easily defensible position, representing the only position any truly sovereign state can have. On the other hand, a single country unilaterally deciding trade for everyone else on earth is not a defensible or reasonable position. As mentioned earlier, it’s not just about military and economic might, geopolitics is also impacted by the internal dynamics of various populations, and on this front the U.S. is positioned poorly.

The American public has become increasingly sick of wars and empire for simple economic and societal reasons, if not for ethical ones. People can look around and see their towns and infrastructure crumbling as trillions are spent overseas. Empire isn’t good for the average American citizen in the long-run, it merely provides lucrative money-making opportunities for our depraved elites. People are finally starting to pick up on this. While national defense is of the utmost importance, national offense is evil, stupid and wasteful.

Once again, from Michael Barnett’s piece, The End of a Liberal International Order That Never Existed:

The West has lived with the myth of a liberal international order for many decades.  Myths are powerful and hard to surrender because they serve important functions.  They helped the West maintain a solidarity and sense of purpose.  They acted as an ideology and helped the powerful feel as if might makes right.  It is not clear that those outside the Western club ever bought into the myth, but they had little success posing a viable alternative. 

U.S. elites appear more focused than ever on imperial ambitions at the exact moment the general population tires of it. This isn’t a recipe for success, it’s a roadmap to collapse.

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47 thoughts on “The Trump Administration’s Iran Policy Will Hasten Imperial Decline”

  1. This is a great post that elucidates what has been happening with the U.S. and it’s major allies over the last 60 years. The U.S. military has increasingly been waging its wars “in secret”. Witness, the killing of 4 American soldiers in Niger, and no one in Congress even knowing about military action in a country most Americans could not find on a map. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of U.S. operations abroad. Last week, 3 soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, a place we should have left 18 years ago. I agree, the American public is recognizing the misplaced priorities of the bloated defense budget, and that more should be spent here in the U.S. The powers that dictate this huge defense expenditure will not go quietly into the night however. We need to demand significant change now.

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  2. Whether some of Trumps seemingly “foolish blunders” are actually intentional and calculated strategy is a bit secondary. The important thing is whether it really undermines US imperialism and hegemony. IF it does, who would lament or complain about such a tremendously beneficial outcome?

    I suspect many Americans are torn between the natural national pride of seeing America Made Great Again, and the worry about what that greatness might be used for. – Germans understand this concern better than most, and Germany is probably the only country in the world where an appeal to make their nation great again is not met with enthusiasm.

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  3. Hmmm… is there a ‘tail’ that wags the American dog? Has this ‘tail’ gotten a lot of petting recently, from Trump? Is this just another gift to Iran’s deadliest enemy? (To be paid for with American $$/blood… ala the Iraq fiasco?)

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  4. I think M K has the geo-political situation well scoped out. Empire of course serves its elites and the elites are positioning themselves for the next big shift by acquiring natural resources. States such as Iran and Venezuela having nationalized resources are antithetical to this coming shift.

    This brings us past the geo-political to the next higher power and wealth dimension, where nation states are cutouts that do the work of this international class of super elites. The pyramid cap if you will. This group sits at the big table where the future of the human experiment is discussed and decided and the Trumps, Putins and Jinpings are then informed of what their national policies will look like. The Anglo Zionist Empire has its role to play as the enforcement of world structure before the next shift just as China and its satellites have their role in the rolling out of the prescribed future. To understand the workings at this level one must pay close attention and be able to read the code of the world controlling institutions, the BIS, IMF, WB, WTO, UN and myriad others, as they develop consensus among the nations or threaten to batter their brains out and mean it with extreme prejudice..

    So to sum up the geo-political level serves the higher order of world structuring as controlled by the pyramid cap elites. These apex elites are trying to bring about their NWO. This new order is largely predicated on the old Technocracy teachings which correspond on a one to one basis with ‘sustainable development’,. being a whole new economic structure and system never seen or tried by humanity before in all its history. Good luck to us all in retaining inalienable human freedoms as this agenda advances.

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  5. hmmm… wonder what those ‘inalienable human freedoms’ are? or ever have been? where? Anthropologists have learned that prehistoric humans (the longest stretch of our existence on this planet, by a long shot) valued social security, derived from mutual obligation, very highly. Don’t think they valued any ‘inalienable freedoms’… a recent invention of ‘civilization’.. which, it seems, we are winding down as we speak : )

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    • Well I can see you can be counted out in there protection. In fact it seems you would be pleased with their abolishment…’which, it seems, we are winding down as we speak.” Here my dear you speak for yourself as there is no ‘We’ that includes me, so that you must mean a cadre of conspirators set on ending such things as free speech. As a long time union activist I knew and know that those freedoms we are born with are supreme to any community values that you seem to think subsume them. Any community which overrides the rights of human kind is a community in failure. These rights have always existed and so are not “a recent invention of civilization” but rather show the effort it has taken over many millennia to finally articulate them and not have the community (run by its leadership) hang the bearer and publisher of such written works as “The Rights of Man.”

      I do believe I have touched something of a raw nerve. Could it be the comparison of the Technocracy manifesto with that of “Our Common Future” manifesto?

    • I’m seeing these comments (of Brad & Nancy) play out more and more. That of which appears to be the taking of extreme sides and the gathering of one’s chosen team. The capitalists vs. the socialists, the left vs. the right, the collectivist vs. the individual, etc.
      To directly address the comments and more the overall situation, isn’t the need for voluntary community cooperation as important and equal to every individuals rights and vice versa.Do we not live to some degree both every day and I would say in my own opinion that without a proper balance of the two we will tend to get what we are seeing now, the tug of war between all manner of extremism! That’s what I see happening.

    • Nancy, your comment resonates. Born in England, grew up in Africa, lived in the US, I was a great believer in “individual freedom”. But no longer. Perhaps the social structures I encountered in West Africa, and the pervasive presence of the Ummah Islamiyya, slowly sank in; or perhaps 20 years living in Asia had its effect, but I now believe that true freedom belongs to the community, not the person. And not, emphatically not, to political organisations.

      I believe a slave who could say “I am a Christian” had more real freedom than one who could say “I am a Senator of Rome”. And a Japanese worshipping at the shrine of his ancestors had more than a Venetian merchant counting his gold.

      We are social animals, and when we forget that we deny our past and blight our future. It is perhaps not an accident of history that most of the leaders of the European Union have no children. Because they have no future.

  6. The Trump admin looks terrible with this Iran obsession. There are three countries howling for Iranian blood, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Outside those three corrupt societies, nobody takes the “Iranian threat” seriously. They haven’t invaded anyone in centuries and they’ve been a willing trade partner to much of the world, doing their best despite sanctions.

    I would like to think the US populace is sick of the neocon warmongering, and while some of them are waking up (including Trump supporters), many are still asleep. The level of brainwashing required to actually believe Iran is the “#1 terror sponsor” is staggering.

    Fortunately other world leaders are in open defiance of Washington now. China basically called Pompeo an idiot. Putin and Kim are about to meet and are likely to have some announcements afterward. India still wants Iranian oil. Even as an American, I have to admit that this unipolar world was one of the worst things ever to happen to us, and its demise will finally make us a bit more honest, at least inasmuch as we were when the USSR existed. Now THAT would be a refreshing change of direction.

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    • Trump admin obsession…whoopie… guess you have never been to IRAN: not since l978 when the Ayatollah took over and for his five daily calls to prayer AFFIRMED “I will wipe Western Civilization off Planet Earth” then was bless via the Kenyan god king with Billions in Cash during its White House reign of terror…get real you desk jock itches…!

    • Let’s see, middle of last night within minutes of each other, two new comments appear from unfamiliar users, both seem to be neocons.

      Either the bots are here or this blog got noticed by some MSM lackeys!

  7. Neocons – the Bill Kristols of the nation – control Trump’s administration? The evidence is that only Trump controls Trump, which is key to his popularity.

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    • How would you characterize Bolton, Pompeo, and Abrams?

      Also, if Trump controls Trump, why has he reversed course on so many things?

  8. I suspect America will become increasingly dangerous / reckless on the world stage, as the lights dim on her glorious career .
    Becoming increasingly less important is a difficult fate to adapt to .

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  9. The same people that control Trump, also controlled Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush 1, Reagan, and Carter, Nixon, Johnson.

    They’re the same people that got rid of JFK and made sure that Congressman Larry McDonald was “disappeared” on KAL flight 007.

    It’s not a mystery. Just follow the money.

    Reply
    • Right on, Genaro!! ‘Follow the money’ and ‘who benefits’ tells the tale. I have my own personal guilt detector … ‘Would they, if they could?’ (and they usually can 😉

    • “hmmm” do you mean people like Elaine Chao? Daughter of a Chinese shipping magnate that married Mitch McConnell, is Secretary of Transportation in the present U.S. administration and…wait for it… is also a member of the Board of Directors of the China’s central bank (Bank of China) which in turn is a staunch member of the privately controlled Bank of International Settlements; of which the privately for profit owned U.S. Federal Reserve is also a staunch member?

    • I would suggest anyone wishing to ‘follow’ the money take the time to view John Titus’ “All the Plenary’s Men’ on YT from his web blog “Best Evidence”. ‘Best evidence’ is a legal term meaning evidence sourced from original documents.

  10. Agree its a recipe for disaster that will be epic in scale, and very difficult for the rest of us to survive through, much less prosper. That is the challenge we will all face

    Trump, Pompeo, Bolton, Bibby boy are all tied at the hip and mutually culpable for the train wreck destruction of their foreign policies.

    This appears to be the dying Empire’s last power grab for all of the energy resources it can steal globally, and to mortally weaken if not destroy those countries it cannot loot and steal from.

    The USA is in a hysterical panic to close ranks with its colonies and vassal states grudgingly move to not a multi polar word, but a bi-polar world. The bi-polar western work consists of two blocks, one dominated by the US, and the Eastern world will be dominated by China and Russia for now, and China in the long run. a key element is to seal off the Americas to the Eastern block.

    Humanity, law, morality play no role in these plans. The plan is all about continued subjugation and dominion over others. Master and the his slaves.

    Reply
    • “Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island;
      who rules the World Island commands the world.”

      This contest can have only one end. It perhaps rhymes with the contest between Rome and Carthage. Carthage had her commerce, her “global” trade, and in the last resort her elephants. Much as the US has her F35 warplanes, which will probably be of less use in combat than Hannibal’s elephants. But Russia has on her side both geopolitics and history. And, as the Third Rome, a tradition that goes back to the Spartan mothers who said, “Come back with your shield, or on it”.

  11. Trump’s moves all look wonderful to nationalistic evangelicals. He’s a friend of Israel (at least the ones in charge). He’s telling the rest of the world that America calls the shots. At home, the democrats look like Wiley Coyote and he is the Roadrunner. The religious right is praising God because Trump is making America great again.

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  12. And of course, all the sanctions on Iran from the U.S., just makes it all the more important for other countries to deal in a non dollar denominated currency. And if this happens, American hegemony and “power” will decrease dramatically.

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  13. Communist Chinese aka CC Military has as its goal to be Number #1 and due to all prior ADMINS it has billions of 2 leggeds at its disposal…and Trillions of USA’s dollars… so blaming President TRUMP is encouraging…CCM…with its alies…Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba Pakistan..etc. Thank you

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  14. Very very unfortunately Trump is ruling the world like a Roman Emperor with dire consequences in 2019.God protects the world against the Modern Imperial Roman Army.

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  15. This is in reply to Black Cat and Nancy Sutton as many comments do not have a reply option to them. Why comments can be made and not replied to is a question for Michael Krieger?

    Either you have the use of inalienable individual human rights or you do not. There is no such thing as having these specific individual human rights mixed with community rights. Community rights are relative to the whims and prejudices of a particular community’s ruling authorities and change easily over time and jurisdiction. These community authorities can range across a spectrum of from the beneficial, through the benign and on to the pyschopathically genocidal. Examples abound through human history of the more psychologically harmful than any others.

    In the modern context, most cannot even describe what community is anymore unless they are told what it stands for as the extent of propaganda, misinformation and obfuscation has all but obliterated any distinct defining sense of what community is among the people at large and this is the goal…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOY4Ka-GBus

    At least with the gauging of the state of inherent human rights the population has some form of base line from which to estimate the direction in which they are being led by the law makers of their community.

    Inalienable rights are not man made rights but come with being born a member of a sentient species,of higher consciousness and therefore able to make the moral distinctions of right from wrong behaviors.

    Take the time and this will explain much of where society should be :
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atjdCbayxYM

    in peace and love.

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  16. Tengen.

    Just want to qualify that there is now no difference between “neocons” and “neolibs”.

    The only discernible difference is exactly where, and against whom, they want to go to war.

    That in and of itself tells you all you need to know regarding who is actually pulling the money/power/control strings.

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  17. I don’t understand this great fear of “empire”.
    Look at some of the great empires in history:

    Macedonian/Hellenic forged by Alexander, propagated by the Seleucids and Ptolemaic states: spread Hellenism across most of the known world & collected the greatest store of knowledge that was unfortunately torched, opened up the world, fostering trade and cultural exchange.

    Roman Empire: used conquest to install a Pax Romana, as brutal s the brutal world it sought to dominate, advancing learning, law and commerce to the entire Mediterranean, lasting over a millenia. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Europe was cast into a Dark Age where knowledge was literally lost for hundreds of years.

    British Empire, mercantilism and naval power projection opened the entire world to the exploitation of Western Powers and its budding scientific community, advancing the Enightenment, natural philosophy and global commerce.

    After two world wars, the US attrited Soviet Russia in a decades-long Cold War to install the Pax Americana, fostering the greatest period of intellectual and economic advancement in an Age of Innovation unknown, heretofore.

    And people bitch.
    Hell! What more could you want?

    Reply
    • Your cost/benefit analysis sucks and you likely have no concept of the non aggression principle. . All the tech advancements would have been achieved without Empire, some earlier others later.Monetary systems that favor the rich and powerful may not have been developed and humanity might be standing in a totally different reality than it does now. Empire serves its elites at the expense of everyone else and usually these elites are of the psychologically deviant class of psychopaths and their entourage of criminal order followers. Empire/government is a diseased belief system of the mind that humanity has yet to out grow. The Latin root of government is govern – to control and ment for mental…ergo control of the mental processes or mind control, which enables behavioral control. Are you a ‘good’ little citizen? Let’s check your social credit score and see. Sorry it’s off to the re education camp for you or conversely you get a free pass to this seasons’s play bill for turning in your democracy loving neighbors and co-workers.

    • “the US attrited Soviet Russia in a decades-long Cold War to install the Pax Americana”

      That’s a kind description for what Bush 1, Bubba Clinton, and the Harvard Business School slimeballs did to Russia after the USSR fell apart.

  18. First of all, Brad, you’re flawed etymology: The -ment is derived from the Latin mentum, which is like the medium or the instrument. Government = That which is used to govern. There is plenty of bullshit for sale out there; doesn’t mean you don’t have to buy it.
    Second: Cost/benefit? What were the costs? Some dead people? Everybody dies, man. Some exterminated cultures? Like everything: adapt or die.
    Third, regarding tech: The vast, vast majority of the technological advancements were developed by strongmen looking for better ways to kill people, to further their imperial interests. From the spoked wheel, to replaceable parts, to fixed- and rotary-wing flight, to radar, to nuclear fission, to space exploration, to GPS.
    Under the Pax Americana, the standard of living of the entire globe has drastically improved and there hasn’t been a global conflict in over 70 years.
    Lamenting on the difference between how things should be and how things are is a waste of resources. I sense a lot of vitriol in your response. You would likely feel better about things if you were not so focused on that irreconcilable difference. A productive, purposeful life leads you to a happier, more content experience on this planet.
    Worry less about “the elites” and more about yourself and your family. Those elites have been there, always, from the tribal chief to the banking oligarch, they live and die like the rest of us. But they are replaced by new ones and, as a class, they’re here to stay.
    And don’t mock the concepts of capital and money: fungibility is an amazing concept. Embrace them. Gather currency unto you. 😉

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    • Hello Ninthebox, Actually your etmology is incorrect the ment of govern-ment comes from the Latin noun mente meaning mind. I looked it up many moons ago….so BS is as BS does.

      When a person can only envision a system for the organization of society because that is the way it has always been does not mean that that system has anything to do with true economic vitality.

      As for your other assumption that tech mostly can only come about through controllers funding weapons programs, this equally ties in with a frozen mindset that this is the only way.

      What if instead of empire for the benefit of a small ruling elite, likely with inter generational psychopathy, the human species had devised a system wherein the leading of a virtuous life was considered the ultimate hallmark to be writ large in history? The creation of money not in self interest but in order to fund virtue. It is all a matter of relative values that could see the present situation as highly improbable. Human kind has and is always looking to invent labor saving devices. It’s the nature of the beast. However, when intelligence out strips intellect we get a world that invents new and more terrible weapons when new and better schooling and the pursuit of excellence would be much more beneficial for the buck than the cost of any Bellum – Americana.

      The more moral a people in aggregate are the more freedom and stability they have. Conversely the more immoral the greater tyranny and chaos a people will manifest. In which direction do you think human kind is moving?

    • How did the selective service draft lottery during Vietnam work out for ordinary families, versus the elites who profited from that war?

      Plenty to “worry” about in that scenario that destroys your argument.

      ..

    • And you’re dead wrong about the etymology. Sure, mentes refers to the mind, and it gets derived to -ment, such as in predicament. I’ve encountered the “government = mind control” assertion in my trips down the internet rabbit hole.
      But it is simply incorrect.
      Mentum, instrument or medium, applies in the context of government, that which governs.
      Same with:
      impediment: that which impedes.
      Or amendment: that which amends.
      Or ailment: that which ails
      Or inducement: that which induces

      You seem like a smart person. Try applying that mental horsepower to something productive. You’ll be a happier person.

  19. But we’ll have a golden utopia as soon as the bad orange man is gone.
    We have magic thoughts and magic soil. Yes we can! The golden glorious people’s collective utopia will be the Great Leap Forward.
    To each according to his needs, workers of the world unite!

    Reply
    • Should be obvious by now that we’ve been on the wrong path for quite a while. Some of us like to make fun of Trump because he was supposed to be different, an outsider, but he’s just another swamp creature who wants cheap money from the Fed.

      Seeing Orange Julius as either great or terrible is folly, he’s just another leader marching us toward oblivion.

  20. I just did a search. What came up was that those who exercise power are not likely to have words that show them or their systems in a negative light, Mentum, as you suggest, serves this purpose, while mente (believed to be the original root) does not and so the change of choice from mente to mentum has become today’s official etymological version but not the original intended version. That said the ‘mind/mente’ in government is not the receiver of the action of governing but apparently refers to those of a same mind to in fact enact governing.

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  21. So, after doing a “search” you’ve determined that originally you were right but that the nefarious elites have redefined a dead language to protect their nefarious intentions somehow reflected in this single English word, thus making it appear that you are wrong today, but perfectly correct before their wily maneuvering?
    Are you a paranoid schizophrenic?
    Do the doctors come in your window at night and extract your thoughts thru your bellybutton?
    You may have an ailment… of the mind.
    Or are you just stubborn?
    It’s ok to be wrong, friend. It’s truly inevitable and the most natural state of the human mind (mens humana). If you can’t accept that, you’re going to be miserable.

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    • Something like that but not my opinion but that of others. The original etymological mutations from other languages to Latin was from mente. Later etymological mutations were from Latin mente to other languages as mentum. English old French enters here.. Why the change to mentum from mente is open to supposition.

      Where I did get it wrong was that the suffix mente in govern-ment is not the reciever of the action of governing but apparently refers to the like of mind to enact government. Government deriving and meaning to initiate control by the like minded.

    • Ninthebox, Yes you are more correct than I am but etymology is not a cut a dried science. From the nuances it appears the original in Latin was gubernare…mente but exited latin as imperium mentum. Perhaps this is due to the fact what was a republic became an empire? Rather like what is the true connotation of the American Constitution. Is it the embodiment of the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence or a collection of laws as set down by its architects that express other intentions. As the idea changes so to can the word to describe that idea.

      Cheers

  22. it seems like you think the u.s. empire can continue it’s dollar supremacy without control over petrodollar markets.

    what’s next mike ? you will advocate the u.s. empire with suffer from americans aggression and control over saudi arabia.

    i don’t think you understand the empire’s money supply is based on its control over the biggest thing money buys….OIL.

    the empire is purely rational and seeking to prolong its life . THE EMPIRE IS> maybe you are conrusing u.s. domestic stability with the stability of the empire. the two however, are arguable at odds with one another, but that’s another matter altogether.

    how does exxon’s imperial reach be diminished by u.s. mic lowering it’s aggression against other countries with lots of oil supply. empire is about trade and trade in oil is the 800 pound gorilla of global geopolitics….
    your characterization of the u.s as a global dictatorship is quaint and kind of 4th grade material. the u.s. is an empire and asserts its power as such over financial transactions and through other means, the last avenue is direct scaleable violence called war. so long as the u.s. manages to avoid that with iran, i think it’s pursuing its interests in a more or less calculated manner.

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  23. It sure takes you scribbling a bunch of mumbo jumbo word salad bullshit to describe your hatred of President Trump and those serving in his administration. Maybe you should move to China or Iran. I think you’d be happier there.

    Reply

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